“Teen Pregnancy Isn’t the Problem.”

It is an honor to have been invited to write as a columnist for Ignitum Today, “the social network of the JP2 and B16 generations” ( aka popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI). My first post appears today. Here is an excerpt, followed by a link to the column:

One recent evening, I shook a bottle of hot sauce over my burger and watched the news from the kitchen table.

Popular that night was the story of a set of New York City schools that are part of a pilot program in which female students who are 14 and up can access Plan B, the emergency contraceptive also called “the morning-after pill.”

The program was part of a media hullabaloo, partly because of what the pill is used for, partly because of how young the girls are who can participate in the program and partly because – according to some sources – if a child’s parents consent to her participation in the program, she can access the pill later and nobody has to tell her parents she did.

A man on the TV turned hopeful eyes toward the crowd in front of him and from behind a podium, he spoke about the Plan B program. It provides a solution, he said, to a problem that has lifelong consequences: teen pregnancy.